facial expressions and form

So I rarely ever raise my hand in English (American Realism), but, almost every time I make a facial expression, my teacher calls on me. (For those of you who don't know me, I make a lot of facial expressions. I've just always let whatever I'm feeling or thinking be displayed through my facial expressions. It's kind-of like my own version of just speaking my mind. Sometimes it's a problem. Anyway . . ..) I had already talked quite a bit in class, but I smiled at the end of class (if nothing else, this class will teach me to control my facial expressions . . . maybe) and so my teacher immediately asked me what I was thinking. Of course I was thinking about ballet. We were talking about Henry James' story The Beast in the Jungle and it seemed so very much like Balanchine's choreography to me. So, even though I was the only "bunhead" in the class, I spent the next few minutes talking about how Balanchine used the format of ballet, but, instead of using the steps to create a particular story, he used the beauty of the steps themselves as the subject of his choreography. In a similar way, nothing at all happens in The Beast in the Jungle, but James' beautifully crafts the English language into an intriguing tale of absences. My teacher summarized it by saying that both artists focus more on the form than the story being told. Yay for always finding a way to talk about ballet in my "academic" classes :)

I know this a major "story basket" post, but I just wanted to talk about my facial expression "issue" in English and also how Balanchine relates to Henry James  . . . so I did :)